It would have been the perfect scam, if only they could write gooder
How I almost got conned on Facebook Marketplace.
One of my New Year’s Resolutions was to declutter my house, and here is how it’s been going so far:
You really don’t realize how much pointless junk you’ve accumulated until you try to get rid of it all, and even after bags of stuff has done to the thrift store and/or the trash, the house still looks like a rummage sale. At least I’m prepared if the taxman come to the door.
I have managed to unload some old electronics on Facebook Marketplace, and I was pleased to get an offer to buy an Amazon Kindle Fire 7 tablet I had lying around. And at full price, too. Why, the buyer even offered to e-transfer the money to me in advance.
And it’s when I got the email notification that I noticed something strange was going on.
The message purportedly from Interac (which handles e-transfers in Canada) said the money transfer was on hold because it was classified as a business transaction, and that the purchaser had to send me even more money so it could clear.
Or something. It really didn’t make a lot of sense, and I told my new business partner about this. He responded that he’d mistakenly sent the money as a business transaction, so he would send me the extra cash needed, which I would then refund less the agreed purchase price.
I suggested he simply cancel it and re-send the money, but he seemed really insistent on doing it this way.
I then got another email saying the additional monies had been transferred to me - strangely, the message didn’t list my bank, nor include a link for me to accept the transaction - and that I had to refund some of it to him.
That’s when the alarm bells really started going off. And that’s when I noticed this:
I sent the guy a message saying this was a scam, blocked him and reported it as such. It was only afterwards I noticed these “Interac” messages came from a Gmail account.
In the end, I didn’t get conned. The tablet is still there for anyone who wants to buy it, and I’m not out any money.
But it was a humbling experience nonetheless, because I like to think of myself as someone who is way too sophisticated to fall for seemingly obvious online scams.
And yet, they kept me on the hook much longer than I should have allowed. I didn’t catch the messed up grammar in the “Interac” messages at first, and it was only when they asked me to send them money that I knew what was up.
Whoever this guy was, and wherever in the world he was located, he knew I didn’t want to lose a potential sale. That’s what scammers do. They find your weak spot - money problems, dissatisfaction with work, ignorance and/or loneliness - and exploit it.
There are a couple of lessons I learned (or should I say, re-learned) from this experience:
Check the email address from which official-looking messages were sent. Big corporations do not use Gmail addresses. If the sender’s email does include the company name (yourname at “aircanadadotcom.com” for example) Google it to make sure it’s what they actually use.
Review the messages for spelling and grammatical errors which no major company would include in its correspondence. (Not now, at least. Let’s check back in twenty years, when all official documents are in emojis.)
If you’re selling something and they’re asking you to send them money, run - don’t walk - away.
Also, if they threaten to shoot you because you backed out of the deal, as allegedly happened to someone posting /r/scams, it’s probably not real.
Insert “actually I can see [cable company/internet provider/airline/bank/government agency] doing that” joke here